Petrit Halilaj

She, fully turning around, became terrestrial

6 March to 18 October 2015

Petrit Halilaj (b. 1986) is an artist whose work is concerned with tracing history and biography. The artist quotes images from his personal recollections and draws on them in his work, translating them into the changed reality of the present day and, with it, into a new context and a new ‘guise’ – which often involves considerable magnification. Halilaj pursues this investigation of the past not just on his own behalf.

Petrit Halilaj has investigated the history of the collection of the Natural History Museum which had to make way for the displays of the Ethnographic Museum of Kosovo. Having tracked down the stuffed animals and other specimens – most of them ruined by years of wilful neglect and damp – in the stores of the Kosovo Museum in Pristina, he has single-mindedly applied himself to the task of ensuring their safety and conservation. Halilaj’s concerted effort to record and preserve the past for the present deserves great credit, and while the achievement is all his, the Art and Exhibition Hall shares and supports his concern.

A cooperation between the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany, Bonn, and the Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne. The Kunstverein is presenting a Petrit Halilaj exhibition from 17 April to 7 June 2015.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by Walther König, Cologne, and edited by the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany, Bonn, the Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, and the Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen.